It is our loss that Aaron Bushnell is no longer with us | Moira Donegan

A person of such profound commitment and depth of feeling could be much more useful to the world alive than dead

The horror of it is beyond my capacity to describe. On Sunday afternoon, a US air force airman named Aaron Bushnell doused himself in gasoline outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC and lit himself on fire. His phone was propped on the ground nearby, livestreaming to Twitch. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell said. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” Then he set fire to his body and screamed, “Free Palestine.” Bushnell died at a nearby hospital some nine hours later. He was 25.

Bushnell’s political self-killing has opened a rupture in American political discourse, dividing even those with a commitment to the Palestinian cause and a fervent opposition to American aid to Israel. Bushnell’s slow and violent death, the terrifying spectacle of it and its brutal irreversibility, have proved profoundly disturbing to many. There have been wild speculations about his mental health. (“Who but an insane person would do such a thing?” some wonder; as if this question could not be asked of Israel’s war itself.) And there have been, too, fervent calls for caution, for reporters and commentators to write about the act in ways that will not encourage others to follow Bushnell’s lead.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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